Top Gear is pretty much the biggest automotive show on the
planet. It's car porn for car nuts and any enthusiast worth his/her salt
watches every episode of the show by any means necessary. Jeremy Clarkson,
Richard Hammond, and James May, are known to take a few liberties when
reviewing cars on the BBC program -- especially Clarkson -- but the antics of
the show with regards to the Tesla
Roadster are landing them in some legal hot water [PDF].

Jeremy Clarkson tested the Roadster along the show's famous
"track" and made a number
of false or misleading claims about the vehicle's capabilities. You can
view the [admittedly low quality] Top Gear segment here for yourself.

Tesla lays out the following portions of the review that
were misrepresented by Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear:

The
Roadster ran out of charge and had to be pushed into the Top Gear hangar by 4
men.

The
Roadster’s true range is only 55 miles per charge (not 211).

One
Roadster’s motor overheated and was completely immobilized as a result.

The other
Roadster’s brakes were broken, rendering the car undriveable.

That
neither of the two Roadsters provided to Top Gear was available for test
driving due to these problems.

Ricardo Reyes, Vice President of Communications for Tesla,
further hammers Clarkson and his antics in a blog
post:

In
the episode, two Roadsters are depicted as suffering several critical
"breakdowns" during track driving. The show’s script, written before
the cars were tested, has host Jeremy Clarkson concluding the segment by
saying, "in the real world, it doesn’t seem to work."

Today,
we continue to field questions and explain the serious misconceptions created
by the show. Many of us have heard: I know this car, the one that broke down on
Top Gear. Despite the show's buffoonery, Clarkson’s words are taken as truth,
not only about the Roadster, but about EVs.

Tesla goes on to say that these lies being perpetrated by
Top Gear are damaging to its image, considering that the show is rebroadcast on
BBC television and available over the internet. In fact, Top Gear has roughly
350 million viewers worldwide, so it's understandable why Tesla is a bit
protective of its "baby".

Most enthusiasts who watch Top Gear know not to take
everything that the show portrays as gospel, but Tesla isn't taking any chances
with this lawsuit -- even if it comes two years after the original episode first aired...

Updated 3/30/2011 @ 11:45am EST

The BBC has responded to Tesla Motors' lawsuit, stating that it will "vigorously defend" Top Gear's claims.

"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007